Mug Shots
by DrawMeASheep
Summary: McGee's giant mug deserves its own show, but network TV just isn't that progressive.


Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS, but I'll hold my breath 'til I turn blue! I want it::stomps:: Waaaaah!

Spoilers: _Tribes_. But you've already been mostly spoiled if you read the summary before you clicked. Hah!

Summary: A series of giant-mug related events rather than a well-defined story with a fancy-dancy plot. I just tell you that in the interest of full disclosure. With their movie truce called, Tony and Ziva now have nothing better to do than go back to picking on the Probie and his giant mug of doooooom.

* * *

Tony paused with his index fingers poised over his keyboard. "What did he say the name of the place where he got it was?"

Ziva looked at him with some confusion. "Place where who got what?"

"McGee and…" he pointed to the colorful monstrosity on McGee's desk, "_that_!"

She assumed the 'thinking face' that bugged him, because he knew she already had the answer and was just trying to kill time so she wouldn't look like an eidetic freak. Eidetic? Where had he picked up a word that clever sounding? Probably some equally clever movie. Maybe he could ask her if it was in that book she'd memorized in… "Pottery Den."

He'd made it to the second 'e' when he stopped, staring carefully at the Google search boxy…thing. "Don't you mean Pottery _Barn_?"

"McGee said Pottery Den," she stated right in his ear, causing him to jump.

"How many times do I have to tell you not to…" he trailed off as she reached around him, embracing him. When he turned his head just the right way, he discovered he could stare directly down her shirt, and so decided not to ask what she was doing just yet.

She suddenly withdrew, leaving him with his tongue poking out the side of his mouth and his hand making a cupping motion mere inches beneath where she'd just been. So close. "Here we are." He looked back to the screen and saw that she'd just been trying to access the keyboard, not trying to seduce him. She'd found a website for the store McGee had mentioned. "It appears to be a small artists' gallery outside the city." He took over control of the mouse and scrolled down the page until a picture of a woman at a pottery wheel appeared with a caption naming her the owner. Ziva was suddenly occupying the space right over his shoulder again. "I think this explains a lot."

He let out a low whistle, leaning close to the monitor rather than returning to the live view. "Apparently our little Probie wants to get into her pottery den."

"Is that supposed to be a euphemism for…"

"I hadn't thought of it that way, but it works. I was just thinking he wants to play a little Swayze to her Demi. Can your little book help you with that one?"

"I have seen _Ghost_." Ziva still hovered over his shoulder, her hair brushing his cheek. "Should we check his iPod for 'Unchained Melody'?"

"Why bother? He's probably got fifteen different versions of it, regardless of his new naughty pottery urges. Pottery den…heh." He propped his chin on his fist, turning to get the full effect of…Ziva's hair blocking his view of the mug. He pushed it aside, saying, "We should take advantage of this."

She followed his gaze. "What did you have in mind?"

* * *

McGee returned from his dentist appointment, rubbing his chin to see if he'd regained any feeling as he stepped off the elevator. He could already hear Tony and Ziva arguing.

"I just wouldn't think you'd like a movie featuring such large rats."

"They're called ROUSes. Rodents of unusual size? Anyway, they look so fake there's nothing really threatening about them. That's like being afraid of Cookie Monster. Sure, he's a monster, but where's the scariness?"

"What if you were a cookie?"

"Y'know…we're thinking too much about this. Let's just watch."

"Why are we watching this movie again?"

"Because, as you've clearly forgotten, oh you of the ninja memory skills, I used it to solve a case a few months ago."

When McGee got close enough, he could that Tony and Ziva were huddled at her desk, eating popcorn from a large… "Hey! What are you doing with my coffee mug?"

"Hey, Probie," replied Tony without turning his attention away from the screen. "How was the dentist?"

He reached over the desk and seized the handle of the mug, tugging it out of Tony's hand. He dumped the popcorn into the garbage can. "Don't take my stuff."

"Afraid your pottery mistress will get suspicious if you go back for another half-dozen of those bad boys?"

"What are you…"

Ziva interrupted, "Website. Now, shhh. Movie." As McGee walked to the bathroom, he heard her make a noise of disgust. "Tony, go make more and I'll pause the movie, but don't eat it out of the trash!"

"I think the top layer should be safe."

McGee was too far away by that time to hear her reply. He was dismayed to find his mug was too large to wash in the bathroom sink.

* * *

Ducky walked into the morgue to find Timothy standing in front of one of his sinks for the third time in a week. "Really, Timothy, if you'd like to spend more time in Autopsy, I'm sure we could come to some arrangement rather than you skulking about down here all alone."

"Sorry, Ducky." He turned and grabbed a paper towel, shakily drying his coffee mug. "It's just that it doesn't fit in the sinks upstairs and Abby makes fun of me when I go to use the one in her lab and that's just ridiculous because have you see the size of her Caf-Pow cups? If you want to make fun of someone's giant cups, you should make fun of those and take the log out of your own eye before pointing out the splinter in your neighbor's and did I just quote the Bible? Because I went to church for the first time in a long time on Sunday because my grandmother was in town and wanted to go and…"

"Timothy!" Ducky interrupted, noting that the movement of his mouth was quickly replaced by rapid shifting from one foot to the other. "Speaking as a medical professional, I have to say – if you insist on using that gigantic receptacle for coffee, please consider switching to decaffeinated."

As Ducky led him toward the elevator he began again, "You know, I was thinking about that, Ducky, because I've been feeling a little jittery lately and I'm not normally one to be jittery, so maybe I will go out and get a refill, but I'll get decaf this time and see if that helps…"

The elevator doors closed on the poor boy and Ducky returned to the morgue, talking to himself, "I need a nap after just watching that. Perhaps I should have recommended a change to plain tap water?"

"Change what to plain tap water, doctor?"

Ducky jumped as Palmer appeared seemingly from nowhere with a big smile on his face. "Your salary, Mr. Palmer! If you'd prefer a job where you can constantly disappear and reappear, I would suggest becoming a magician! Now where are those test results?"

* * *

Ziva sat on her desk, staring at the object Tony had shoved in front of her face. "I give up."

"It's the Washington Monument!"

"I know that," she replied with an eye-roll to counteract his incredulous glee at filling her in. "Why do you have a six-inch model of it? You can see the real thing anytime you want."

"Not in McGee's mug." She didn't give him the satisfaction of looking interested. "I'm gonna glue it to the bottom, so when he gets about halfway down, boom! National monument! Good, huh?"

She took the model from Tony and looked at it carefully. "It's rather phallic, don't you think?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean it looks a bit like…"

"I know that part!" he shouted, grabbing the little monument back from her. "I just want to know why you brought it up!"

"I just find it interesting. You want to put your Washington Monument in McGee's mug? What would Sigmund Freud say?"

"Something about you having penis envy? What did he ever say?"

She let it go. "Well, if you are _comfortable_ with this…"

The next day, McGee gave a coughing shout as he drank from his mug. "Tony! Why is the US Capitol in my coffee cup?"

Ziva looked at Tony. "The Capitol?"

"I thought about what you said. I'd hate to give our favorite skincare obsessed Probie the wrong idea." He winked. "Don't you think the dome sorta looks like a boob?"

* * *

Abby walked upstairs, but was discouraged to find that no one was in the squad room – no one she wanted to chat with, anyway. After a moment's hesitation, she decided to take a memento back to the lab with her. When Gibbs and Ziva came down over an hour later, she was sprucing up the small cactus she'd transplanted into McGee's mug with colorful bits of plastic. "You're early, Gibbs! You're never early!"

"Early?"

"The DNA results aren't back yet. Usually you time it just right and I don't have to stall and…"

"Answer questions about why you put a cactus in McGee's mug?"

"You say that like he only has one, but I happened to have an inside scoop that he bought six. Now he has five mugs and a nice planter!"

"Uh, four and a planter," Ziva corrected. "He isn't using the one with the Capitol in it anymore because he's afraid the hot coffee will dissolve the superglue and poison him. Oh, and he broke another when he dropped it in Autopsy. So I guess he's down to three."

"Two," Gibbs stated.

Abby waited a beat before asking, "Two?"

"Ask Ziva."

She huffed. "McGee does not know about that one yet, so I do not think it counts."

Abby looked back to Gibbs, who filled in, "They drilled a bunch of pinholes along the bottom of the spare one he keeps in his bottom drawer."

"Oh." She looked down at the cactus, now wearing ornaments on nearly all of its spines. "Well, he can always transfer Spike to another home, I suppose. But the colors in the mug really match!"

"I'm sure he will leave it if you ask him to, Abby."

"Thanks, Ziva. And now he'll have to use his spare one all the sooner!" She spun on her heel as the computer beeped. "Hey, DNA is back!"

* * *

McGee knelt on the floor of the gym in front of the broken shards of his last usable mug. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear Tony and Ziva arguing about what had occurred.

"You _do_ owe me lunch! I broke the mug. That was the wager."

"The bet was that you could break it using only your killer ninja moves!"

"Yes, and I used a special move called 'throwing' to smash it against the wall. So I win."

"You cheated!"

"You never said I could not use the wall."

"Will you both shut up?" McGee interrupted, collecting the pieces of his mug in his hands. "You smash this mug, you ruin two others, Abby turns one into a planter and I break one! Now, in less than a month, they're all destroyed! I hope you're happy!"

Tony actually hung his head, but Ziva was less affected by the admonition. "That is only five."

"What?"

"Tony and I are responsible for three, Abby for one and you for one. That makes five."

"That's right." He thought for a moment. "I had another one in my desk. Did you guys do something with that one too?"

"Not us. But don't worry about it, Probie." Tony threw an arm around his shoulders. "Now you've got a great excuse to go back to the Pottery Den and hit on…um, the pottery lady."

McGee dropped the shards of his last mug into the trash as Tony and Ziva began to argue about lunch again. "I guess…"

* * *

Gibbs set his hammer down on the smooth hull of his boat as he heard noises somewhere upstairs. Taking a sip of coffee, he directed his eyes to the top of the stairs. Seconds later, Jenny appeared in the door. "Jethro, you really should…what the hell is that thing?"

He put down the large mug on square of cardboard serving as a coaster. "Coffee mug."

"It looks like the water pitchers they'd put on the table at Clown College."

He inspected the colorful mug he'd covertly borrowed from McGee's desk. "Holds a lot of coffee."

"I guess so." Approaching the boat, she considered it carefully. "Still, I wouldn't have thought you'd be one to use something so…flamboyant."

"Did you come here just to insult my coffee mug?"

"No, I wanted to speak with you about…"

Gibbs smirked as Jenny went on and on, enjoying the fact that he didn't have to stop working in order to get a refill.


End file.
